


One Last Wish

by SoThisIsAThingIWrote



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21554470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoThisIsAThingIWrote/pseuds/SoThisIsAThingIWrote
Summary: Atem and the afterlife. What is the difference between wanting and the will of fate? A post ceremonial duel/DSOD rambling
Relationships: Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi | Atem
Kudos: 14





	One Last Wish

**Author's Note:**

> Because the ceremonial duel never sat well with me and DSOD just woke all of the feelings. Random ramblings and I'n not quite sure what this is. Blink and you'll miss it prideshipping.

His father hesitated at first. Longing and joy written clear across his face (younger than he can ever remember it being) but also shame, regret and guilt. He takes the first step to close the distance between them, and that's all Aknamkanon needs to close the distance, to enfold him in his arms, to murmur  _ my son, my son, my son _ over and over into his hair. 

His mother has no hesitation. When his father leads him into her garden, she drops her basket with a cry and pulls him into a strong embrace before he can even breathe a shy hello. 

He sits at their feet and lets himself feel a child again, just listening to their voices.

***

The palace is how he remembers, and he spends days rediscovering his favourite haunts from childhood. He wraps Ta-ameya from the kitchen into a cloth and climbs as high as he can, his hands and feet remember the way to the roof, which stones to grab, how far to jump, before his mind catches up.

He dangles his legs over the side as he savours the Ta-ameya, remembering the day Yuugi realized that the spirit of the puzzle had not, in fact, ever eaten a hamburger, and had charged his way through the streets of Domino to Burger World to rectify that, even though it was nine oclock at night and he'd just eaten dinner. 

Yugi had had a stomach ache after, though Yugi didn't say a word and pretended he didn't.

He had once eaten so much Ta-ameya it had made him sick. And earned him a lesson in princely decorum from Shimon. 

He'd have liked to have shared Ta-ameya with Yugi. 

He wonders if the kitchens here can make anything possibly resembling a hamburger.

***

There are other kings in these halls. Those who came before him, and those who came after. They treat him with a mixture of respect but mostly curiousity; the king that sacrificed all, but that none can remember. 

They gather together, ostensibly to confer and dispense judgement, but paradise, particularly paradise presided over by the god of the underworld, wants little in the way of real ruling. So they drink and they share stories from life before; battles, feasts, festivals. Of great public works, temples and obelisks and expeditions they sent forth out to neighbouring lands.

He sent forth no expeditions, had no time to build temples, and the battles he fought are best left forgotten in the shadows. They were not the glorious tales of daring and victory his forefathers like to tell. He's fairly certain no one really wants to hear what it was to carve his name from history, what it felt like to end his mortal life and bind his soul to a magical item, or to spend 3000 years trapped in darkness, his memories bleeding away like sand through a crack.

He feels a bit like that nameless spirit again as he slips away from their gathering, unseen. 

***

Eventually he runs out of palace to rediscover. Instead, he takes to roaming the halls, restless as a caged cat. 

Shada finds him up a tree, harvesting figs for the kitchen so the ushabti don't have to.

***

He's not surprised when Seto Kaiba strides out of one existence and into the next. He'd been half expecting it since the moment he did the same. 

He doesn't know where the notion to step forward, and take Kaiba's face in his hands comes from. Now at the very, very end, with Kaiba slipping away in pieces in front of him, he finds himself crossing the last bit of distance between them, reaching up, fingers curling around that stubborn jaw, trying to say- 

_ -You've always been my equal- _

_ -I hope I helped bring you peace- _

_ -Please be happy- _

_ -I wish - - _

But no words come out, and instead he finds himself staring into blue eyes and the sudden appearance of a questioning concerned furrow between them and then Kaiba is gone, no more than a few leftover wisps, which hover in the air before winking out like stars. 

He is alone. Alone and determinedly ignoring the voice in the back of his head telling him he wasn't trying to  _ say _ anything, he was trying to  _ hold on _ . 

***

The ushabti unnerve him.

He knows it's silly, knows that they are nothing more than clay and sorcery, meant to serve so that others do not have to, but there's been one too many shadow games, one too many friend or adversary reduced to blank eyed shells of themselves - 

He dismisses them whenever he can and handles most tasks himself. 

Some of the regalia is tricky to put on without a second set of hands, so he stops wearing it. 

He feels lighter.

***

The Nile is both the Nile and very much  _ not  _ the Nile. He can stand on its shores and look out over its waters, but the other side is strange, never quite in focus - like looking through a haze. 

The Nile is both the Nile and not the Nile, it's banks are the banks upon which the sun god dies each night, and rises again each morning. It is the barrier between the world of the living, and the world of the dead.

He can get up to his waist before it's waters start to churn ominously. 

  
  


*** 

There are no ships on the Nile that is both the Nile and not the Nile. No fishing boats, no pleasure barges, no great expedition ships coming in from the Delta. It is the discordent note in an otherwise perfect picture. 

There are no ships but there are roads. Roads that cut through the city and stretch out beyond, leading somewhere where the desert meets the sky. 

He packs a bag. 

***

"The hardest part," Karim says, when the hour is late and they are all well into their cups, "was not knowing.” The priest stares at the bottom of his cup. "Waiting millenia for you to return to us here, never knowing when, or  _ if, _ you ever would." 

He looks around at all of them, gathered here with him and drains his own cup, setting it carefully on the table. "I'm here now." 

Next to him, Isis reaches out and lays a hand on his arm. 

They all do that, reach out and touch him at odd moments. They touch his hands when they pass him food and drink, they give an arm to help him on and off his horse though he doesn't need it. They bring capes and pelts when the sun dips beyond the Nile, draping them over his shoulders with exaggerated care. Reassuring themselves that he is actually there.

***

He unpacks the bag.

***

He doesn't expect Seto Kaiba to return in a rage of glory.

But return the man does, and catches him off guard in one of the gardens, standing knee deep in a pool, idly making swirling eddies rise out of the water. It's a far cry from a shadow game, but it's refreshing to use his magic for something other than card games, now that it too has been unbound from the puzzle. 

His latest eddy crashes back into the water below when Kaiba storms into the garden, flings his arms wide (no duel disk this time) and practically shouts to the heavens; " _ Is this what you really want?"  _

S _ omething  _ must be written clear as day across his face because Kaiba is suddenly striding across the garden, closing the distance between them, splashing into the pool and sending the water lilies spinning away. Looming over him. "Is. This. What. You. Want?"

And he doesn't know how to answer that, because he doesn't  _ know _ . He's been  _ trying _ so hard to follow the path of destiny, and he'd long since given up believing that he'd ever  _ have  _ a choice, but suddenly Kaiba is here again, as perfect as he remembers him, and all of those traitorous emotions that refused to go to rest when he was supposed to, those wants and wishes that he's not supposed to have, are bubbling up inside and  _ nobody _ has ever asked him what he  _ wants- _

He reaches out and presses his hands against Kaiba's chest, curls his fingers into the fabric there. Holding on.

"I-" he stops, swallows, starts again. Starts with something small, one small want allowed to escape. "I want you to stay. For a little while. An hour. A day. Stay with me.” 

Slowly, Kaiba's fingers curl over his own. "Get me out of this sun first."

He laughs. 

***

"Are you happy?"

At his feet, the Nile that is not the Nile pushes against him. He glances over his shoulder as Mahaad approaches, a cloak to ward off the early evening chill draped over his arms. The other man stops just short of him, feet firmly on dry ground. 

"I could be happy," Mahaad continues, not waiting for an answer, "knowing that someone I cared about was happy. I think time and distance wouldn't be so difficult, if I knew they were with someone they cared about too. I would be content to wait for a later reunion, knowing it would be much sweeter for it." Mahaad steps forward, draping the cloak around his shoulders. "I think we all would." The priest bends and places a bag at his feet. 

He stares at the bag. The cloak is thick and warm, the kind for traveling, not an evening's entertainment of Nile that is not the Nile gazing. He stares at Mahaad.

From the darkness comes Mana, leading a horse, her eyes wet with unshed tears but her smile strong.

"I think all this would make us happy, if we knew that it was what that person  _ wanted _ ." 

***

The road cuts through the city, leading out into the desert beyond, where sand meets sky. Somewhere along that road is the door Seto Kaiba has made through strength and will and sheer  _ want-  _ breaking through because who needs rivers that are not rivers when you can  _ fly- _

And Atem knows in his heart that that door can open a third time, one last time, that somewhere, somehow, Seto will hear his call.

All he has to do is want it.

He picks up the bag.


End file.
